


Scars of a Different Kind

by DjDangerLove



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, because will I write anything else? probably not, hurt joe and comforting nicky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DjDangerLove/pseuds/DjDangerLove
Summary: A month of skipping safe houses after escaping Merrick's lab has Joe's scars from the ordeal coming to light. Nicky, as always, will take care of him.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 27
Kudos: 408





	Scars of a Different Kind

The moon hangs high outside their window, a half-crescent wide enough to look like a fresh baked croissant sitting atop the tree line. The light from it casts a soft glow into the kitchen of their current safe house, leaving Nicky to only leave the light above the stove on and nothing else. The others don’t seem to mind, can see well enough to spoon soup out of freshly rinsed bowls that haven’t been used in nearly two decades.

They’d opened the door to the dust covered home a couple of hours ago, each of them splitting off into different rooms to clean the linens and pillows of time and particles before reconvening in the kitchen as if they hadn’t a clue what to do now that the house was humming with electricity. 

With a fond huff of annoyance, Nicky tasks Nile with setting the table with spoons and bowls and placemats if she could find them and he asks Andy to see if she can get the small radio in the front room to play some kind of music to drown out the hum of the rickety vents as heat pushes through them. The two ladies scatter with barely audible agreement leaving Joe standing listless beside him in the kitchen. 

Taking the man’s hand in his, he intertwines their fingers and tugs Joe over to the counter. “Would you like to chop the vegetables we picked up from the market for me while I start the broth for soup?”

He feels Joe’s fingers squeeze around his just a moment before he shakes loose to reach for a knife and cutting board. Joe is already at the sink running cool water over a bundle of carrots when he replies with an audible afterthought of, “Of course,” like he hadn’t been sure that Nicky understood the meaning behind the pressure of his hand before he let go.

Nicky runs a hand down his back in quiet assurance as he passes him on his way to pull a tall pot from the cupboards to Joe’s right. He tells Nile, upon her re-entering the kitchen just as he closes the cabinet door, that there are no bowls to be found there as she sets about searching for them. 

The sounds of rusted hinges as Nile opens and closes cabinet doors mix with the gentle taps of Joe’s knife tapping against the wooden cutting board as he slices carrots. The rhythm of it washes the kitchen in a calming ambience Nicky might miss once Andy gets the radio working in the next room, but he lets it soothe him for the time being as he stirs broth over a heating burner. 

The bone deep weariness settling in all of their bones from the Merrick deal a month ago and hopping from safe house to safe house ever since makes itself known suddenly in Nicky and he props himself up by his hip against the counter.

He mindlessly keeps stirring if only to keep himself awake and watches Joe chop the vegetables further down the counter. He knows the fatigue he feels is nothing compared to the exhaustion weighing on Joe’s shoulders and making his tall figure hunch slightly forward. For all the man has waved off their concern in the past month, Nicky is almost at his breaking point with letting Joe off the hook with hushed promises of, “I’m alright” in Arabic and romantic murmurs of, “You are here with me, how could I not be” kissed into his skin. 

It’s decided for him though when the knife slips sideways on the end of a carrot and slices through Joe’s thumb from his nail bed down to the metacarpal. The man curses in Arabic, dropping the knife and grabbing at his hand as it drips blood onto the linoleum. Nile abandons her search for spoons having already found the bowls and brings a dish towel from the sink. She shoulders against Nicky as they stand side by side glancing down at Joe’s bleeding thumb. 

“It’s fine. It’s fine,” Joe dismisses through hisses of pain as he wipes the dish towel first at his thumb to expose his already healing skin then dropping down to wipe the blood from the floor. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

Nicky watches the soaked towel push blood across the floor and leave stains in broad smeared circles. “Joe.”

But the man keeps up his mantra of “I’m fine. It’s fine,” and continues to uselessly wipe the towel across the floor.

“Yusuf.”

“It’s alright. It just slipped. The other vegetables were already in the bowl. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

Nicky watches Joe pause only to fold the drenched towel in half with noticeably shaking hands and glances at Nile when she pushes air through her nose in a concerned huff. 

“Habibi, please,” Nicky says again, this time enforcing it by squatting down in front of him and placing a stilling hand against Joe’s trembling one preventing it from ruining the floor even more.

“It’s fine,” Joe whispers, eyes still on the blood between them. “Everything….everything is fine.”

Nile gently tugs the towel from underneath their hands and offers Nicky a clean, damp one with wide eyes shining with worry. He smiles gently at her and tilts his head back towards the stew, grateful when she understands to divert her attention back to their dinner cooking on the stove to give them a semblance of privacy. 

Nicky ignores the floor for now and begins wiping at the blood on Joe’s hands as the man continues to whisper in his mother tongue so low that Nicky can’t quite make it out. He matches the man’s volume, but bumps the man’s chin so he’s sure to hear him when he reassures, “Everything will be, my love. Everything will be.”

It seems to knock the man out of his trance and he shakes his head while yanking his hand away from Nicky with loud apologies to the room. 

“You cut way too many carrots for this amount of broth. We’ll live,” Nile says over her shoulder as she stirs. Nicky is grateful for the way he feels the tension in Joe’s arms relax as he guides the man over to the kitchen table and pushes him down in a chair.

He shushes Joe’s protests by pulling his love into a hug once he’s sitting, the man’s head resting against Nicky’s stomach as his arms wrap loosely around his waist. Running his fingers through tangled curls, he presses a kiss in the trail his hand leaves behind. “Peace be with you. I’ll make sure of it. Rest for now, yes?”

Nicky feels Joe nod against him and kisses his head once more before turning back to help Nile at the stove.

———————

Sitting around the table in moonlight and the one light above the stove, Nile moans happily at the first bite of warm soup. “So much better than train food.”

Nicky laughs easily, swallowing his own sip before replying, “With the limited ingredients we purchased from the market, it was the best I could do. Once we’re able to stock the pantry I shall make up for what train food left desired.”

“Speaking of which,” Andy says over the softly playing jazz music coming from the radio and the audible sound of her boot knocking into Joe’s under the table. “Joe. Nile. Tomorrow the two of you can run into the city, get supplies, food. Nicky and I will check back in with Copley to make sure our trail is clear. We’ll stay here and rest for longer if everything checks out.”

Nile groans again, still just as happy, but not because of the soup. Nicky smiles at her around the bite he just took before glancing at Joe spinning his spoon around his bowl.

“What, um…” Joe trails off, uncharacteristically uncertain and words unusually tangled. “Where are we again?”

The jazz falls soft, leaving the room awkwardly silent as Joe keeps his head down, fingers spinning the spoon double time. Andy glances at Nicky with a, “what the fuck” expression but Nile seems oblivious to it as she laughs.

“Yeah it’s hard to keep up with us bouncing all over the place, but I think Montchu or something?”

“Monschau.” Andy corrects as she sits up straighter, still glancing from Nicky back to Joe. “Are you alright?”

Joe nods his head, dramatically up and down though his gaze never wanders from his uneaten soup. “I-“

“Forgive him. He’s nearly starving and in desperate need of sleep,” Nicky supplies before Joe can offer his mantra from before. Joe furrows his brow and makes to push away his bowl but Nicky holds it in place. 

“You’re terribly hungry,” Nicky says as if reminding him where he left his wallet for the hundredth time, then softens just a bit to add, “Please, eat. Gummy Bears are null in nutrition despite you eating two bags on the train.”

Joe seems to consider arguing, but blaring horns from the beginning of a new jazz song break the tension and he shrugs before taking a tentative sip of soup off his spoon. Nicky squeezes his wrist in a silent “thank you” before looking back to Nile. 

“Please do your best to convince him to come back with more than just candy from the market tomorrow.”

“Be the adult. I got it,” Nile teases and if it brings the tiniest bit of a smile to Joe’s face then Nicky may over look the fact that they’ll probably come back with a bag full of sugary treats. 

————————

The moon is lower by the time Nicky closes the door to their bedroom. The light casting through the windows isn’t enough to guide them around the furniture so he tugs the chain of the bedside lamp to flood the room with a soft, yellow glow. 

Joe sits on the edge of the bed, fully clothed and doing nothing but staring at an old stain on the carpet. Nicky leaves him for the time being, changes into sweats from his go bag and brushes his teeth in the adjoining bathroom before walking over to Joe’s bag and rifling through it. He finds shorts that Joe likes to sleep in and a black hoodie that he knows brings comfort and turns to the man they belong to. 

“Come,” Nicky gently urges, tugging on Joe’s bicep to no avail. His love doesn’t move, just continues to sit shoulders hunched staring at stain just beyond Nicky’s socked feet. “Yusuf?”

“I..” Joe shakes his head, curls coming loose and shielding his eyes. He hasn’t had a proper haircut since before Merrick nor has he shaved. It’s concerning in its own right as Joe never lets his beard get this shaggy, the hair on his neck this unkept. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

Silence stretches between them, but Nicky soon sees the carpet under Joe’s bowed head become new with fresh stains. Fearful at first that Joe’s thumb hadn’t actually healed, Nicky falls to one knee in front of him to double check but finds smooth, unbroken skin. He glances up to Joe’s face, pushing back curls from his eyes to see tear marks catching the lamp light. 

“My heart,” he calls softly in Italian, brushing away a loose tear before it reaches the scruff at his cheeks and then kissing where it ended. “Please, do not hide from me. I am right here.”

Joe is unable to stop the tremble of his lips from beneath his overgrown beard, nor the tears that spill over into it before Nicky can chase them away. “I can’t,” the words tumble from him again like it’s the only thing he knows how to say in Italian.

“What can you not do, my love?”

Joe swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing harshly under patches of hair lining his neck. He sniffs once and wipes a hand under his nose before pushing a whisper of “Anything” into the space between them. “I can’t do anything.”

While their bodies don’t carry raised ridges of skin or lightened shapes of pigment, their bodies still scar and Nicky realizes as he brushes his fingers through the unshaven hair at Joe’s face that this is one of many. His hollowed cheeks sitting underneath, thin from eating next to nothing, and the darkened skin under his eyes from not enough sleep are all scars from their time at Merrick’s lab. His silent tongue where it used to run wild, his memory blank where it used to be detailed, and his trembling hands in the calmest of moments are blemishes left from Booker’s betrayal. 

Fractionally together, Nicky’s heart beats for the both of them in a heavy rhythm as he attempts the faintest of smiles for Yusuf. “That’s okay. You know I will always do anything for you. Now come,” he urges once more, knows that he will have to use more strength to manhandle Joe into the ensuite and tugs him up to standing.

He wraps an arm around his waist and maneuvers them through the doorframe, walking them far enough in until he can push Joe to sit on the edge of the tub. He grabs a washcloth from under the sink and runs it under warm water then turns to Joe and stands in the space where his legs are splayed. 

“In a few days,” Nicky starts gently as he runs the damp cloth through Joe’s curls to get them to stay out of his face, “when we are well rested, had enough good food to eat, I’ll find a good barber to trim the nest on top of your head.” He laughs softly, twisting the cloth to and fro in a small gesture of ruffling his hair to let the man know he’s only partially teasing when he refers to it as a nest. He pays no mind to the lack of reaction from the man under his ministrations and keeps going.

“But tonight, I think you’ll feel much more yourself,” he says, taking the cloth from his curls and folding it before running it over the man’s face to wipe it clean, “if we do something about the creature growing on your face.”

Joe’s eyes are closed, but his brow twitches nervously at the suggestion from underneath the cloth. “I…I don’t…”

“Shh,” Nicky hushes and smoothes away the line above Joe’s nose with the washcloth. “I’ll take care of you. There’s no need for you to worry.” Nicky turns back to the sink to rinse the cloth and wrings it before taking up his place once more. He runs it under Joe’s nose and along his jawline, then slowly down his neck. He pauses only once when Joe flinches and asks, “Joe?”

“It’s nothing, Nicolo. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

It’s a blatant lie considering Nicky had been following a clear path up and down, but he lets it go for now, turning back to the sink once more and plugging in a beard trimmer from the cabinet on the wall. Joe nearly pitches backwards into the tub when Nicky clicks it on.

He shuts it off just as quickly and leaves it on the counter in order to steady Yusuf on the edge of the tub by his shoulders. “What does your head show you that you know in your heart is wrong?”

Joe falls into Nicky, damp head pressing into the man’s t-shirt at his side. “When we were…at Merrick’s… they…they did stuff. Stuff to my neck, my face. I know there are no scars to cover, but I…I haven’t been able to shave just in case.”

Nicky closes his eyes against memories he doesn’t have. They’d been separated for a time, a time in which Joe had refused to tell him what they’d done. He feels a rage he hasn’t felt in years swell within him, keeps it from coiling in his muscles by the sheer fact of Joe needing him to be anything but angry. 

He runs his hand through damp curls, uncaring of the moisture his shirt soaks in. “You have scars, not there in physical form, but scars all the same, but you are right. You do not have a single one that you need to cover.”

Joe brings his hands up to cling to Nicky with shaking shoulders. 

“I love you no matter,” he promises, dropping soft kisses to the top of his head before leaning back, arms still holding strong in case he should not step away. “Trust me to take care of you, okay?”

Joe drops his arms from around Nicky and nods his head before tilting it back and exposing his neck. Nicky warns him before he clicks the trimmer on again, warns him again before he starts trimming. He talks to Joe the entire time, soft murmurs of Arabic describing all the relaxing things they can do in the city in the coming days. He only stops when he turns off the trimmer and begins dusting off loose hair from Joe’s shirt. 

He runs a hand along the thin trimmed beard and waits for Joe to meet his gaze before confirming, “There is the man I love beyond measure. I am happy to be rid of the creature keeping me from him.”

Joe runs his hands along the hair, inspecting without thinking and shaking loose any excess left behind. “I’ll admit, I feel much lighter now that it’s gone.”

“Good,” Nicky says as he cleans up the counter then turns to tug the shirt from Joe’s body. “Let’s change this, shall we? Then you can lay down.”

“What about a shower?” Joe asks, eyes closed once again and gently swaying as Nicky tugs his shirt from around his arms. Nicky grins despite everything, having to steady him once the shirt comes free before turning to get a new one. 

“I think it can wait until morning when there’s less chance of you cracking your head open when you fall asleep standing up.”

Joe blinks his eyes open, perfecting his posture as if he wouldn’t have toppled over moments ago had Nicky not stabilized him. “I’m not that tired.”

Nicolo ignores that lie as well, well aware that the two packs of gummy bears on the train had been for the sugar high instead of tasteful desire and the many nights Yusuf has kept himself awake staring at rotating ceiling fans just so he doesn’t succumb to nightmares. Instead, he tugs the new shirt over Joe’s head, helping him guide his arms through and then reaches for the hoodie he set on the counter. 

“Here. This too.”

Joe hums softly, easily allows Nicky to dress him in his favorite pullover and then curls his hands in the sleeves. Nicky thinks he may actually be asleep at this point and nudges him gently to standing. “Shorts, my love, then sleep.”

They get him in the shorts with one moment of unsteadiness that nearly sent them both to the floor before Nicky tenderly drops Joe onto his side of the bed and pulls the covers up over him. He tugs the chain on the bedside lamp and paints the room in only moonlight from the window then walks to his side and gets in.

Joe half asleep, reaches for him when the bed dips but Nicky catches his arm, feeling the tremors still running through him. “Not tonight.” Joe’s eyes open to slits, unsure as to why he’s being denied until Nicky scoots over, tucks Joe’s arm between them and then cradles him close. 

“Nicky?”

Nicolo shifts until Joe’s head is tucked up under his chin and says, “Yes?”

“I do not wish to sleep.”

“You trust me to take care of you as I did moments ago, as I always have, yes?”

He feels Joe shift closer, his reply of, “Always,” pressed into his chest.

“Then close your eyes. There is nothing that you will ever dream of that I cannot save you from.”

The heat pushing through the vents is loud in the silence that follows and the first birdsongs are barely filtering through as the morning draws closer. Joe relaxes against him, body finally giving into an exhaustion even an immortal can’t outrun. Nicky thinks he’s asleep when he hears a whispered apology breathed between them. 

Their room is lighter now, morning chasing away the night faster than the two of them need it to. Nicky glances out the window then squeezes Joe just a bit tighter. “Does the moon ever apologize for its craters? The trees for their broken branches? The morning for coming too soon?”

He feels a huff of laughter against his throat. “Hardly.”

Nicky smiles into the curls under his chin. “Then, my love, you never need to apologize for the scars this world leaves behind on you. I’ll love you through each and every one of them.”

The half-crescent moon falls below the horizon as Joe falls into a peaceful sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a comment if you feel inclined, then come yell at me on tumblr @ djdangerlove about this immortal family.


End file.
